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Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

I know this isn't the topic, but the best book I had to read for school was Stiff:The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, followed by A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

I actually liked the Merchant of Venice. A Connecticut Yankee was our first assignment in Science Fiction as Literature class, supposedly the first science fiction story written.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

People in the nineteenth century had much slower lives and so they were happier to devote more time to a book.

I've noticed recently that I'm much less inclined to read stuff that I was enjoying in my teenage years.

Wouldn't rather the contrary make more sense, according to your own words? That is my case... in my youth, I was so eager to find what was really worthier (leaving aside that, until as late as my fifteen years, when I started studying in depth the rethorics of classic [Spanish] literature, I found books rather unpalatable, boring -cf. post above- except for Frankenstein or Treasure Island, in Catalan and as a school read, or Las crónicas del sochantre, Lazarillo de Tormes, Tenko or Witness as a personal choice), and now that I know what is the core of books I appreciate from the whole of Human Creation, and now that I have learnt to actually read books of different styles, and not just go through the lines to get the plot, which is the enlightened mass does, or to compare it with one particular ideal of rhetorics, which is what the coarse Academia does, I can delight in building up some pulp around that core

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by thatgirl

I honestly wish we'd read some Greek classics in high school. We were only taught about Greek and Roman gods and goddesses just so that we'd know what was going on when they'd be referenced in other books we had to read further down the line. For example, the Odyssey would have been doable maybe in the higher grades. It's really fun to read. The Illiad on the other hand...I did not get that one at all. It was just constant battling. So boring.

If you do not read the music of the original Homeric dialect, you are totally missing homer, even when you thing you are getting something good from him: the Iliad is just the extreme, pure poetry over a boring whole... consider that Homer's poems where made up of a series of episodes intended for bards to recite during what would be called social gatherings in the post-Mycenaean era.
The same for Racine or Pushkin: translations with the wrong focus (the common idea of what to focus on in a literary work, basically plot & co.) make them totally pedestrian, and their place in their respective national literatures absolutely unfathomable for unaware and untrained foreigners.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by gamestarp

Has anyone ever actually read all of Moby Dick? I love to read, always have, and I still can't get through the third chapter.

It is a tricky book (in good part because it was badly put together, just like the Quixote... it just flew out... from whatever part of the writer you choose...) so the book that got to be considered a classic blablabla actually starts at something like the twentieth chapter.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by Nishin

Les fourberies de Scapin - Moličre. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooring

OMG that is one of my favorites! ... I guess the problem is the translation... it so vexes me that people still buy a translation and they think they are reading Moličre or Dostoyevsky... and totally ignore the translator's work which is what they are ACTUALLY reading, for better or for worse!
But I assume, quoting that French title, that you read the original text: you just have bad taste and a bad sense to appreciate Moličre

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by bankside

Shakespeare spoke English - it was easy to read but better to watch. I have an "I only watch Shakespeare" policy because I think his plays are really scripts meant to be seen in performance, not read. I doubt reading the script for any modern film would respect the producer's intent…

If you "only watch Shakespeare" I wonder what you make of his heavenly prosodic craftmanship... from what you say, you are to Shakespeare what Victoria Beckham is to a good dish of food.

Originally Posted by bankside

And Beowulf is not just a different language but a foreign one. Might as well try your hand at reading icelandic or danish.

That should be said more often: British people are to the Anglo-Saxons what the blind vampires are to Robert Neville: that is why Beowulf is legend

The only book I was ever forced to read was Hamlet. We were never required to read any of the "classics". Our reading list was always books of our choice, so a lot of my fellow students picked the easiest books to read. I always enjoyed reading so I would challenge myself. The worst one I ever chose to read myself for class was "A Tell Of Two Cities". It was boring and a chore to read and resulted in the worst mark I ever got. I still remember getting a C grade on it.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Simply because he could do no better... and he was sure that certain topics and a certain flashy rhetoric would draw the masses like moths to his feuilletons?

You should really read the thread.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

If you "only watch Shakespeare" I wonder what you make of his heavenly prosodic craftmanship... from what you say, you are to Shakespeare what Victoria Beckham is to a good dish of food.

Being watched is what Shakespeare is FOR.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by alister

The worst one I ever chose to read myself for class was "A Tell Of Two Cities".

It was the best of books; it was the worst of books.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by Kulindahr

Being watched is what Shakespeare is FOR.

So a deaf person with a good sight "gets" Shakespeare as good or even better than anyone? As I always say, barbarity gains power from the inside.
Under those guiding principles, no wonder even (in factly, mostly) the 'experts" are at a loss in deciding what is Shakespeare and what is not, like those who can not tell W.A. Mozart from Leopold Mozart unless there is an old piece of writing stating "it was Wolfgang, idiots!".

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

I reckon you have to watch AND read Shakespeare. You need to watch it to appreciate the drama and understand the plot. But you also need to read it at leisure to appreciate his lengthy poetical discursions.

(Shakespeare's Hamlet runs over four hours but Harold Pinter's version of the same play would be ninety minutes. )

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by pat grimshaw

I reckon you have to watch AND read Shakespeare. You need to watch it to appreciate the drama and understand the plot. But you also need to read it at leisure to appreciate his lengthy poetical discursions.

(Shakespeare's Hamlet runs over four hours but Harold Pinter's version of the same play would be ninety minutes. )

The drama and the plot derive from the piece itself: it is such a dim-witted distinction... it is not duncian, it is not fallacious, it simply does not make sense. The problem is that people are used to think of reading precisely as something silent and to be done with, as you say, "leisure", a concept of reading which, as a mainstream practice, hardly has two centuries, and very much is limited to the Western world.
A complete performance of ONE single play of Kalidasa would be longer than anything we have ever had in the Western world... so what.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by belamo

Yes I read it: after posting what you quoted ... and it still DOES apply ... wholly

I doubt you read the thread -- the real reason he wrote that way has already been given. I presume he wrote to the best of his ability, and tried to appeal to the subscribers, but the real reason for his style is that he was getting paid by the word.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by belamo

So a deaf person with a good sight "gets" Shakespeare as good or even better than anyone? As I always say, barbarity gains power from the inside.
Under those guiding principles, no wonder even (in factly, mostly) the 'experts" are at a loss in deciding what is Shakespeare and what is not, like those who can not tell W.A. Mozart from Leopold Mozart unless there is an old piece of writing stating "it was Wolfgang, idiots!".

This response just shows you as the arrogant ass people tell me you are. This is like saying that money is no good for spending because someone could burn it. You can use that cheap, juvenile escape on anything.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by pat grimshaw

I reckon you have to watch AND read Shakespeare. You need to watch it to appreciate the drama and understand the plot. But you also need to read it at leisure to appreciate his lengthy poetical discursions.

(Shakespeare's Hamlet runs over four hours but Harold Pinter's version of the same play would be ninety minutes. )

His "lengthy poetical discursions" are best appreciated when spoken by someone who knows how to do it. The beauty of those lies in the way they roll from the tongue.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by Kulindahr

I doubt you read the thread -- the real reason he wrote that way has already been given. I presume he wrote to the best of his ability, and tried to appeal to the subscribers, but the real reason for his style is that he was getting paid by the word.

And in what way all that tells something new or is in anything different from what I have said

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by Kulindahr

This response just shows you as the arrogant ass people tell me you are. This is like saying that money is no good for spending because someone could burn it. You can use that cheap, juvenile escape on anything.

My post only pointed at the fundamental problem with the appreciation of the arts: they are considered only by the way they are perceived and the effect they produce, like in your case, Shakespeare's rhythm depends on how the actors move on the stage, not on the flow of the speech directing them to speak and move, when they must, in a particular rhythm.

What you perceive as arrogance is my weariness of authorities like Bloom using the name of Shakespeare and his works to talk about themselves and their impressions under the appearance of a technical and specialized ability to discern more than the average citizen, and all the rest following in that direction like a herd, from which only a "juvenile" would dare to try to be set himself apart pointing at a naked emperor.

As for money, money is not just a material piece of paper susceptible of being burnt, but a consensual value derived from definite social and economical relationships in a particular equilibrium. So you can burn what paper money you please, or throw away as many coins as you want for future geeks to collect and exhibit, as long as you have something mirroring the power that the value associated to those items allows you to have in the society that gives that value to them.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by JohannBessler

To answer the OP: I hated the Histories of Herodutus. Oh. My. God. That's all I have to say about it.

Again, you either did not actually read Herodotus' work in his simple and easily flowing style, but something like Macaulay's translation, or you have a problem preventing you to appreciate his archaic Ionic discourse. Can you imagine how a Shakesperian sonnet sounds translated into Chinese?

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

To answer the OP: I hated the Histories of Herodutus. Oh. My. God. That's all I have to say about it.

They're no better in the original.

Xenephon, OTOH, is better in the original -- he knows how to tell a good story.

But I can't believe you went to a high school that offered up Herodotus!

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Can you imagine how a Shakesperian sonnet sounds translated into Chinese?

No, but I've heard it done with a thick Mexican accent.

Thank God we'd stopped doing the English to Greek exercises before we got to the point where we would have had to turn English classics into Attic Greek....

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Note of interest: The way that fundamentalists read the Bible is as though it was written in narrative history -- something not used before Herodotus.

Implicit in the stupidity is the fact that no piece of literature can be grasped unless read as what it is.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Xenephon, OTOH, is better in the original -- he knows how to tell a good story.

That is just one opinion, yours. An arbitrary one

Originally Posted by Kulindahr

No, but I've heard it done with a thick Mexican accent.

Thank God we'd stopped doing the English to Greek exercises before we got to the point where we would have had to turn English classics into Attic Greek....

A mere accent in a language poses different problems than a translation to a different language. But that question was adressed to Bess Ler: my question to you was in #160
Following your logic, a Shakespearean sonnet, in its original English form or translated into Chinese is nothing until it is somehow ("lyrically" rather than "dramatically") staged.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by belamo

The stupid fact is taking for granted that the problem is precisely to agree on that "what it IS".

Yes! Literature is NOT geometry.

There aren't correct answers and incorrect reactions as to the writer's intention. The Dickens which bores or confuses me now may be my perfect companion in my dotage. I will have an understanding of life's foibles and the "spare time" to appreciate it.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by pat grimshaw

There aren't correct answers and incorrect reactions as to the writer's intention. The Dickens which bores or confuses me now may be my perfect companion in my dotage. I will have an understanding of life's foibles and the "spare time" to appreciate it.

Sure there are. Shakespeare, for example, wrote for the stage. That means his intent was that his works be done on the stage, where people could see them.

And for those with English difficulties, that's the common usage as in "go to see a play" -- if someone said he was going to see "JUB On the Boards" on Broadway, one would not assume he was going to put in earplugs for the duration of the event.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

That being said, I had to read the Histories of Herodotus in a Pre-college situation, not as part of the regular curriculum.

Ah -- so they checked to see if you could handle college by inflicting that on you.

Actually, Herodotus isn't so bad if you know ahead of time that he treated everything in history as basically of equal value, and that he delighted in digression -- it's only if you expect him to tell history the way we do that he's a dud; think of him as a story-teller exploring some unknown country, and it's a different story.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by Kulindahr

Ah -- so they checked to see if you could handle college by inflicting that on you.

Actually, Herodotus isn't so bad if you know ahead of time that he treated everything in history as basically of equal value, and that he delighted in digression -- it's only if you expect him to tell history the way we do that he's a dud; think of him as a story-teller exploring some unknown country, and it's a different story.

I wonder what has his scientific value as a historian got to do with his style of writing deplored above by Bess.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

actually, I struggled with the whitman; i still haven't digested much of it, and I'm a queer hippy myself.

I was surprised by how light and easy a read Crime and Punishment was.

I like Shakespeare. I find it best in large print and a column beside the text containing footnotes. I just can't stand Kenneth Branaugh.

I begrudgingly admire the zinger of Catcher in the Rye - how it captured the angst and disappointment of a younger generation, and captured it in convincing monologue. And Salinger - kind of an asshole - brags that he's going to write a bestseller, and, when he does, seems to resent the world for being so fucking fascinated with it and him. I like the Glass kids a lot more than holden caufield.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

^ yes, he does snap occasionally but he still gives a lot of good guidance (I don't have the time to explore all that deep culture). And didn't your mother ever say that it's occasionally necessary to "be cruel to be kind"?

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by JohannBessler

They also taught us not to discuss politics in public-.

Not to do it while at table: if we do not discuss in public, be it politics or anything else, we are ending up discussing it with ourselves in silence, and in fear of being punished by social and political authorities.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

Originally Posted by pat grimshaw

I say that belamo has a right to be arrogant. He is massively erudite.

So YOU too, after all, consider me a humongous chunk of idiocy.
If I had anything like real erudition, I would not have the need, let alone the time, to post on this MB.
At most I might qualify as some diffuse sort of geek. You are free to determine my topic of geekiness.

Originally Posted by pat grimshaw

He and his fellow European JUBbers are part of a culture which makes ours on our side of the world look very puny and pathetic in comparison.

"Your" side of the world is just a division of and from "our" puny and pathetic, senescent side of the world.

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

I say that Belamo has a right to be arrogant. He is massively erudite.

He and his fellow European JUBbers are part of a culture which makes ours on our side of the world look very puny and pathetic in comparison.

He doesn't belong in the company of our other European JUBbers -- he's arrogant, nasty, rude, snide, and over-impressed with himself.

They aren't.

"Thirty-one* states allow all qualified citizens to carry concealed weapons. In those states, homosexuals should embark on organized efforts to become comfortable with guns, learn to use them safely and carry them. They should set up Pink Pistols task forces, sponsor shooting courses and help homosexuals get licensed to carry. And they should do it in a way that gets as much publicity as possible. "

Re: What is the worst book you were forced to read in high school?

He doesn't belong in the company of our other European JUBbers -- he's arrogant, nasty, rude, snide, and over-impressed with himself.

They aren't.

They may be truly European. As I have said several times before, not only I may be too European to be a true American, but then I am likewise too American to be a real European.

That "over-impressed" reproach reflects only your own impression: if I were so satisfied with myself, I would not stoop to quote other people's posts and throw mine to them, would I? But you seem so pissed to poke about my stuff that your only comfort after suffering the itch it generates in people entities like you, seems to be the belief that I am a conceited jerk. Some sort of reverse psychology, maybe...